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Government to build capacity to fight cyber crime

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Government has implemented various ICT solutions to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information which are essential to maintaining reputation and trust in the use of ICT enabled services. A case in point is the recent incident of attempted theft of government funds from Bank of Uganda to banks in foreign countries by cyber criminals, which was ably handled by internal experts. This was revealed by Hon. Frank Tumwebaze, Minister of Information, ICT and Communications in his key note address at a cyber security workshop organized by Centram in partnership with UCC and NITA-U.

In a speech read for him by the Assistant Commissioner for Information Technology at the Ministry of ICT, the Minister said Government will review all legal and regulatory framework in the ICT sector to allow for efficient operationalisation, enforcement and improvement of cyber laws, and to enhance information security. “Our strategic objectives over the next five years will include the development of a secure, reliable and resilient information security system with national capacity to respond to cyber security threats; and to develop and implement strategies to protect consumers of ICT from cyber security threats”, he said. He underscored the need to establish a National Information Security Monitoring and Control Centre in order to manage cyber security in real-time.

He urged the participants to be ahead of cyber criminals to protect our digital assets against known threats, as well as unknown threats. He observed that this can only be done by continually building cyber security capacity so that Uganda can have a critical mass in the fight against cyber criminals. He called upon them to work with Government to protect Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII) such as telecom masts and other information and communication infrastructure; central clearing houses and online banking and finance systems; energy sector infrastructure and systems; and national defence and security systems among others. “You must ensure that the social media and online presence in general is not abused in order to protect the image of the country”, he added.

The workshop was attended by participants from Government Ministries, Departments, and Agencies; security agencies; the private sector and academia.